Transcriber: Lucy Khayut Reviewer: David DeRuwe
My name is Tom Otton.
I'm here today, not to teach you, but to tell you a story.
My story.
Please bear with me while I take you back to the beginning.
What comes next is quite daunting for me, personally.
You see, I'm going to share something with you
that nobody outside of my family knows.
It's something that I thought long and hard about,
including in today's talk.
Then I realized, if I didn't share this with you,
I'd actually only be telling you half the story.
Whilst I'm the one stood up here now, this isn't about me.
This is about an opportunity to share a positive message.
And for that, I'm willing to get a little bit uncomfortable.
So nine years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer.
[9 years ago]
It was operable. I had the operation.
It was removed.
And 'touch wood', I'm still OK today.
[Regret]
Something very strange happens when you hear the words 'survival rate'.
The fear of regret becomes very real,
and there were some very real regrets heard by nurses working in palliative care
caring for those in the final stages of their lives.
See, we dismiss the elderly,
we don't take into account the lessons that we can learn from them,
and whilst, from a technological perspective we may have a point,
in terms of life lessons, we couldn't be further from the truth.
In fact, the polar opposite.
In 2009, there was a nurse by the name of Bronnie Ware.
She was working in palliative care,
and she wrote an article that went viral.
It later became a book.
And the title of that article was: 'The top five regrets of the dying'.
I'm going to share a few of those with you today.
Three of them.
Once you read through those,
I want you to really look at the words and the wording used.
There are a few words that jump out at me.
Courage,
being true to yourself,
and giving yourself permission to be happy.
Be true to yourself means not what your boss wants,
not what your family wants,
not what your friends want or expect for you.
It's about what you want.
It's about being true to yourself.
Now, I've been fortunate to have some incredible experiences in my life.
And because of those experiences,
I'm involved in some interesting conversations.
At some point during a lot of those conversations, it sounds a bit like this:
'Wow! That looked amazing! I wish I could, but ... '
and let me stop it right there.
You see, what comes next is an excuse.
The excuse normally falls into one of these four brackets:
And don't get me wrong, often these are quite valid.
However, most of the time they are just excuses.
[Work, Family, Self belief, Fitness level]
I want you to look at these excuses and I want you to see the similarities
between the excuses and the regrets that we've just discussed
from that article from Bronnie Ware.
If there's one thing I want you to take away from today's talk, it's this:
It's the excuses that you're making today
that will be the regrets that you have at the end of your life.
It's the excuses you are making today
that will be the regrets that you have at the end of your life.
Now, because of my journey, I have an outlook on life.
And I've put that into words for you today.
And it reads something like this:
'You must have the courage to seek adventure in life
and you must live it on your own terms.'
For me the keyword here is 'adventure',
specifically 'physical adventure'.
That's what gets me going; that's where my passion comes from.
[Physical adventure]
Now, adventure doesn't just happen.
Adventure requires planning,
and planning requires goal-setting.
I'm not talking [little] 'goals', I'm talking 'goals'.
I'm talking 'goals' so big they scare the hell out of you.
I urge you when you are setting your goals
to set goals that you don't believe you can achieve ...
yet.
Because if these goals aren't big enough, they won't change your behaviour.
[Change your behaviour]
And if your behaviour doesn't change, nothing changes.
So you have to motivate yourself.
You have to scare yourself into changing your behaviour.
Now, let's look at this from a macro perspective.
Let's break down life into these four areas:
We've got work, we've got family, we've got friends, we've got wellness.
And over the top of that, we're going to lay these big scary adventurous goals.
I can guarantee you from personal experience
that if you have the courage to chase adventurous goals,
it will improve every single area of your life.
In work, you'll become more focused; you'll become more 'results-oriented'.
You'll have less time for the drama that's always there in the workplace
if you look for it.
In family and friends, you see this is where the real opportunity lies.
Stop looking to your family and to your friends for support.
Stop looking to them for inspiration, when you can be the inspiration.
You can be the support.
In wellness, well ...
I don't think I need to explain all the benefits to both body and mind
of chasing your passion, of becoming fit, focused and healthy,
and what that does to your soul.
Now, when you go through this process of chasing these adventurous goals
and whatever they might be, everybody's journey is different.
My goals will be different to yours; my adventures will be different to yours.
But when you go through that process and you're pushing your boundaries,
what happens next is amazing.
You'll become self-aware,
you'll understand what you want out of life,
you'll understand who you are,
and most importantly, you'll understand what you're capable of.
You can then make life choices knowing what you're looking for in life
and knowing what you're capable of.
And if you make life choices accordingly, you'll reach fulfillment.
Fulfillment is an incredible thing,
but it's what happens next which is really important.
When your cup is full, you can provide to another.
When you don't need to take, you can give.
And giving to others
is the most fulfilling activity a human being can undertake.
When the world can be a better place because you are here,
because you're self-fulfilled,
you can provide to others, and you can help people along the way.
Now, I'm going to show you what my journey looked like.
It's going to be different to yours, but these were my adventures.
I need to start this by saying that I was a very average rugby player.
However at one point in my life,
I decided that I wanted to play international rugby.
I was nowhere near the standard required,
but I worked and I worked and I worked.
I put it above all else, I pushed everything else away in my life
and I focused - this is what I wanted to do.
Work came second; relationships came second.
This is what I wanted.
In 2011, I managed to get myself into the Arabian Gulf International Squad,
and in 2012 this happened.
This was a very proud moment in my life at the time.
I got an International Cap for my adopted home country, the United Arab Emirates.
I was pretty happy that day.
Two days after this photo was taken, I broke my knee, snapped my ligament -
I never played another game of rugby in my life.
It's okay, life has a funny way of working out.
So I started running as part of my rehab.
That progressed into long distance running,
which I was told was not a good idea with the state that my knee was in.
But there was something I wanted to do.
That sounded like an excuse to me.
I didn't want an excuse to turn into a regret later on in life.
In 2014, I ran my first marathon.
[87 km ultra marathon]
A few months later, I teamed up with my buddy Marcus.
We took on 87 km of the Welsh Mountains -
17 hours it took us to get through that.
There's a reason I tell you this,
and it's not because it's like, 'Wow! Look at what I did!'
It's because this was horrific.
Not horrific like, 'Yeah, it sounds pretty bad'.
No, I mean, really horrific.
The last 20, 30 km, I let myself down, I complained, I was weak -
I wasn't proud of myself at all.
For a long time afterwards, I looked back on this, and I cringed.
But I said to myself, 'I can't leave it there,
because this is going to become a regret, if I do'.
So not long after, I signed up for what's been termed
'The Toughest Footrace on Earth',
250 km across the Sahara Desert,
self-supported.
Looked a lot like this:
[250 km across the Sahara Desert]
You cover six marathons in five days, and you don't shower for eight.
(Laughter)
That's kind of interesting.
I got the finishers' medal. I finished it.
And to the outside world, that seemed like the ultimate goal,
to finish something like this.
But to me that wasn't the ultimate goal; it was part of it.
You see, on the plane on the way over, I sat there and I wrote some notes.
My goals on a piece of paper.
I kept that piece of paper all the way.
Now, on that piece of paper were goals,
not just to finish, but they were behavioural-led.
Stay strong.
Don't complain once.
Make yourself proud.
Inspire others to finish.
So I come off the back of my last ultra -
I hadn't even been able to look after myself in the last 20 km.
Now, I was taking on something that was multiple times the size.
Not only was I going to be completing this,
but I was going to be inspiring others to finish along the way.
Being sat on the flight on the way out of the Sahara,
looking down at that piece of paper
that was very crumpled and dirty at that point,
being able to smile and know to myself that I've achieved those goals
because I hadn't let an excuse from a previous race turn into a regret.
That was a true achievement to me.
I backed that up the following year
with a 145 km across the Wahiba Sands Desert in Oman,
which is a beautiful part of the world by the way, if you've not been down there.
You can see us on the bottom right there.
More experiences, more lessons learned,
by pushing boundaries and chasing adventures.
Met some incredible people along the way,
and after 145 km,
this is one of the most beautiful sights you'll ever see.
Then we dropped the bags as we ran
off the sand dunes straight into the water.
It stung a little bit.
We spent about half an hour in there.
There was something in the back of my mind
saying to me, 'OK, so you can run, and you can deal with the heat,
but what about sub-zero temperatures?
What about mountains?
How's this whole mental strength thing you've got going on
going to deal with that -
when you're completely out of your comfort zone?'
So I decided I needed to take myself off to the Himalayas.
And this was October of last year.
It was the worst time for business. We were very busy.
And I couldn't find anybody to come with me.
And I sat down and I was like,
'Maybe I should postpone this? I can find a better time to do this.'
And I thought to myself, 'No, this is just an excuse'.
There was absolutely no reason why I can't do this on my own,
and I'm not going to let an excuse turn into a regret later in my life.
In October, I took on Mera Peak, 6475 m,
in the shadows of Mount Everest.
After four and a half hours in the pitch black,
and all we could see is the one metre in front of us that the headlight lit up.
Four and a half hours walking on ridges, minus 18 degrees in the snow.
[Mera Peak summit]
I stood on what felt like the top of the world.
It was an incredible sight.
The sun was rising, the view of all of the mountains around us.
Those peaks, picking up the morning sunlight.
That was one of the most beautiful views I'll ever have.
I've had some incredible adventures, some incredible experiences,
but one of them tops all.
It's these guys.
[Create group 2017]
Six years ago, I started a digital communications agency.
I told you earlier about having the courage to seek your adventure,
but I also said:
'Live life on your own terms'.
That means a different thing to different people.
To me, it means this
and the incredible people that I get to work with, day in, day out.
These are the people that allow me the freedom to chase my adventure.
And for that, I'm eternally grateful.
I also mentioned to you about giving back.
When you reach the top of that pyramid, that's what you need to aim for.
And for everybody, everybody will have a different way of giving back.
I'm only sharing my story.
My story is through fundraising
for the Larchfield Children's Orphanage in Tanzania.
It's something that's close to my heart,
and it's something that we've been able to work well with over the years,
with the fundraising for the different events and through the company.
And this has been my journey, but I urge you to find yours.
You see, if you don't -
I want you to think right now,
I want you to think, what's that one thing that I'm making an excuse about?
It's already written down,
if you make excuses they will turn into regrets.
Don't let that happen to you.
So I challenge you from today,
to make a decision to stop making excuses,
so that you don't have regrets later on in life.
A very smart man once said,
'Our time is limited.'
So I thank you very much for giving me a few minutes of yours.
(Applause)